Clinton talks up Obama in Youngstown

Friday

Oct 31, 2008 at 12:01 AMOct 31, 2008 at 11:34 AM

CAMPBELL -- Telling a roaring crowd of 1,800 that "you've got this race in your hands," former President Bill Clinton said yesterday that Ohio voters have a "really, really good choice" in Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

CAMPBELL -- Telling a roaring crowd of 1,800 that "you've got this race in your hands," former President Bill Clinton said yesterday that Ohio voters have a "really, really good choice" in Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

In an appearance in a high school gymnasium in a blue-collar enclave of Youngstown, Clinton hailed Obama as "smart and organized," and who has "better policies" and will make "better decisions" than Republican John McCain.

Warning that "we could lose the automobile industry" because of the nation's sluggish economy, Clinton said, "We cannot fool with this election. This election is too important to be decided by little things."

He also hammered home the point that Ohio could decide the outcome of the election, saying "it's really true that as Ohio goes, so goes the nation. Once or twice a Democrat sort of slips through to the White House without carrying Ohio. Not often. No Republican ever has."

Clinton's appearance highlighted a day when both campaigns dispatched high-profile surrogates into the crucial state of Ohio. Actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee urged an audience of more than 100 people in Lancaster to back McCain, saying he hopes voters take "presidential courage" into account.

"At the end of the day, if we do what we are supposed to do and get out and talk to our people, we will be OK," Thompson said. "The collective judgment of our fellow countrymen will be OK. Stand up for this man. Stand up for John McCain as he has stood up for us his entire life."

In northeastern Ohio, where the theme was Obama's call for change, it seemed more like old times. Clinton, who made hash of his schedules as president, was an hour late. Yet the crowd didn't mind, heartily cheering as he walked about the stage with a microphone in his left hand, and one man in the audience shouting, "We love you."

Clinton, who also appeared in Toledo yesterday, is providing crucial support for Obama. He campaigned in two areas where his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., performed well when she defeated Obama in the March presidential primary.

"Do I wish she won? Of course I do. But that's not the point. You're making the hiring decisions. You've got two choices. You've got one really, really good choice. This is not a close question."

Clinton spoke in a high school named after one of the founders of Youngstown Sheet and Tube. The high school rests on a high bluff above the Mahoning Valley and the ruins of the steel plant, which shut down Sept. 19, 1977, a day still referred to in Youngstown as Black Monday.

The abandoned mills are rusty reminders that throughout most of the last century, Youngstown was one of the nation's largest producers of steel with jobs so plentiful that "if you worked in the plant, you could work eight hours and then go into another plant -- if you were a welder," said Bill Quinn, an 84-year-old retired Republic steelworker who now lives in Boardman.

During his Lancaster appearance, Thompson acknowledged that McCain remains behind in the polls and faces "strong headwinds" from the economy and an unpopular Republican president. But Thompson maintained that McCain is closing the gap.

If voters compare McCain's history as a Navy fighter pilot, prisoner of war and longtime senator with an expertise in world affairs to Obama's relative youth and inexperience and past associations with "radical friends," they will conclude that McCain is the right choice, Thompson said.

The latter is a reference to the McCain campaign attacks on Obama's past ties to a Palestinian-American professor who is critical of Israel and William Ayers, a radical protester turned professor in Obama's hometown of Chicago. The Obama campaign has dismissed the attacks as inaccurate and distorted.

While voters might want change in tough economic times, they won't throw away their principles in a time when there also has never been a greater need for leadership, said Thompson, who also visited Rio Grande in Gallia County yesterday.

jtorry@dispatch.com

jriskind@dispatch.com

On the Web • Journalists from , WBNS-10TV, ONN-TV and Community Newspapers share observations from the campaign trail in the Web-only video series Beyond the Bites, available at DispatchPolitics.com and the iTunes Store.

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